'Coconut Telegraph'

THE MORAL MAJORITY will never use a Jimmy Buffett tune for its campaign theme song. This son of a son of a sailor and captain of high times upon the high seas has an irresistible disregard for authority and thus great appeal for those who prefer to live and let live. The topical trends of songs like "Manana" and "Why Don't We Get Drunk" have endeared Buffett to a group of fans whose numbers are certainly smaller than Springsteen's following, but whose rowdiness level is equal or higher.

For those happy few--that band of brothers who undertake (or dream of undertaking) daring deeds while under the influence--Jimmy Buffett symbolizes the reluctance to grow up and accept traditional molds. Less a latter-day Peter Pan than a twentieth-century Southern version of Prokofiev, Buffett suffered through a lengthy period of obscurity. His peculiar style evolved out of Nashville origins, tempered and improved by Floridian and Caribbean overtones and directed by his own laid-back outlook on life. Even today, although "Margaritaville," probably his biggest hit to date, has been transformed by "The 101 Strings" into dentist-office muzak, few people are familiar with Buffett's music. Fans greet each other with the same excitement that marks a meeting of, well...Harvard alumni. It's a shared experience that links otherwise alien souls.

Buffet's music traditionally conveys the atmosphere of the South Florida lifestyle via Buffett's own interpretation of current themes. The cultural traces include Heineken empties and fishing lines, spongecake crumbs and lime rinds. But in his latest album, "Coconut Telegraph," although familiar themes reiterate themselves, an underlying message glows in the brain like a neon Krystal sign: Even Jimmy Buffett is getting older.

Though he denies it in the track "Growing Older But Not Up," Buffett has had to denounce part of the beer-blasting, drug-strewn lifestyle that was his trademark. The birth of his daughter Savannah Jane in 1979 turned the man's thinking to the more pragmatic aspects of life. Though he still imbibes the greenies with regularity and enters races like Nantucket's Opera House Cup in his new sailboat also christened Savannah Jane), it is plain to see that marriage and a family--two of the heaviest anchors known to man--have caused even Jimmy Buffet to change his wild ways.

I'm growing older but not up

My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck

So let the winds of change blow over my head

I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead.

This may sound like the old Buffett. But the fact is, he's settling down.

FURTHER PROOF emanates from other tracks on "Telegraph." Buffett delivers the schmaltzy "Stars Fell on Alabama" with more sincerity than sarcasm, when one might expect the reverse from the iconoclast in him. On the Mac McAnally tune "It's My Job," he could almost pass for a neo-conservative. This track alone ought to sell thousands of copies of "Coconut Telegraph" for him down at the B-School:

It's my job to be different from the rest

And that's enough reason to go for me

It's my job to be better than the best

And that makes the day for me.

Of course, Buffett cannot take full creative credit of responsibility for these thoughts. But the fact that he recorded a song with such a mainstream message seems to indicate that our man has finally gotten up out of his hammock, put down the rum punch and headed off on some serious thought waves.

"Little Miss Magic" will bring sad tears to the eyes of those who love Jimmy Buffett for his immaturity. For in this track, it seems as if he has really gone around the grown-up bend. Voicing fatherly endearments to little Savannah Jane (not the sailboat) as well as reflections on his own aging, Buffett appears to have tied up at convention's dock:

I see a little more of me every day

I catch a little more mustache turning gray

Your mother is the only other woman for me

Little Miss Magic, what you gonna be?

BUT BEFORE the old fans bid their disappointed adieus to Mr. Buffett, they must tune in carefully to the one track on "Coconut Telegraph" which does not appear to have been written during a Geritol overdose. In a masterful study of life's doldrums and how to fight them, Buffett opens the second side with "The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful." The song begins with chatter and shrieks from the Coral Reefer Band and sundry other studio personnel, culminating in Buffett himself hollering "Don't ever start a band!" This song will make the album worthwhile for all diehard funseekers with lines like "Hell, nobody's perfect/would you like to play/I feel together today" and:

Still time to start a new life in the palm trees

If it doesn't work out

There'll never be any doubt

That the pleasure was worth all the pain.

So inevitable developments have led Jimmy Buffett a little further along the path of growing up. But he has only grown up to a certain extent. Though his trail has become littered with diapers and Visa receipts, along with the artifacts of a carefree existence, the independence of mind that makes his music distinctive still hangs on. It hasn't yet wasted away in Margaritaville.